Long before snowplows and snow blowers, man compacted snow on trails and on roads of towns and villages. Large sleds or rollers powered by a variety of means have been used for centuries. Compacting snow and letting it set still provides groomed access to many arctic areas. “Icing-in” a road is still a common practice at many logging and construction sites in remote areas during the winter months.
Often, snow sport enthusiasts want to level drifts and low spots or to compact snow providing beautifully groomed access for their sport. Such sports include alpine skiing, snowboarding, tubing, sledding, snow shoeing, snowmobiling, and more recently biking.
One goal of snow grooming is producing a smooth, uniformly compacted snow surface with a uniform high density with easy-to-use equipment. Sometimes it may be desirable to reduce the amount of snow on a groomed trail or road for safety considerations. Large operations use snow cats and tractors to groom snow on a massive scale. But a snowmobile, an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) or utility task vehicle (UTV) can pull a smaller grooming drag for less expensive operations. In some instances, the trails are not wide enough for a large tractor or snow cat to groom the trails. Smaller groomers allow grooming trails with a standard snowmobile, ATV or UTV as an affordable grooming solution for many neighborhood, golf course and parks and recreation trail systems.
When using a utility snowmobile, a tracked ATV, or UTV to groom trails, the snowmobile, ATV, or UTV typically pulls a small grooming drag (such as about four feet wide) to engage the snow, while being easy to pull. The snowmobile, ATV, UTV and associated groomers are also less expensive than larger equipment. This may allow for more frequent grooming operations and grooming where enthusiasts may be enjoying the snow and trails.
The focus of this disclosure is snow grooming implements that can be used with snowmobiles to economically groom for snow sports, as well as for walking and hiking trails. Such implements are usually light-weight and can be towed at higher speed behind a snowmobile, ATV or UTV, rather than a large snow cat or tractor.
Certain prior art snow grooming drags have multiple spring tripping blades. As the blades cut off moguls, they can often hit rocks, stumps, or other fixed objects buried in the snow. While not all drags have spring tripping blades (rather they are mounted solid so they do not “trip” when hitting a buried solid object), certain prior art has each individual cutting blade as spring-loaded so they can trip out of the way if they hit a buried object. This can help prevent damage to the drag, vehicle, and the operator.
In addition to flat and compacted snow, sometimes it is desirable to reduce the amount of snow on a road or a trail for safety considerations. Deep snow can be problematic for the growing trend of winter biking. One innovation making winter biking easier is the popularity of fat tire bicycles—specialized mountain bikes equipped to ride on snow-covered roads and trails. A useful implement to groom roads or trails for winter biking is a v-plow.
Prior known v-plow groomers are attached by a single link from the front, which does not allow for lifting or adjusting the height of the plow. A lightweight snow groomer is desirable with a means of adjusting a plow relative to the compaction pan of the snow groomer.